Often, once Employers realize they have a legal requirement to have a written safety program (Illness and Injury Prevention Plan, IIPP), we get a frantic call for a copy of a “typical plan.”

The Employer then goes to work with “white-out” replacing the name of the employer on the “typical plan” with their own name, and voila’, a plan is born! 

The Employer can now honestly answer that he has a plan, has complied with the law, and check the task off of his overburdened task list.

We certainly understand the need for expediency necessary to comply with the law, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could develop something useful, as well as legal?

A good tool for such plan customizing is as close as your computer, on the website of the Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH).

This link will take you to the page titled, “How to Create Your Written IIPP”
www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/etools/09-031/how.htm

The three step process is as follows:

Step One—what have you already been doing for safety?
Step Two—review the Sample Model Program
Step Three—Answer the IIPP questions

The beauty of this tool is that you finish with a program customized for your company, it is sans boilerplate, and may actually be useful!